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Where Legends Outnumber People

By DARYLN BREWER HOFFSTOT

Published: August 1, 1999

WALKING on the Irish seashore, my 7-year-old son picked up what looked like part of a beige seashell. ''A human rib,'' said Michael Gibbons, our guide and local archeologist.

''Can I keep it, Mom?''

I thought not. The islands off western Ireland's Connemara coast are so full of legend that it seemed wise not to get on the bad side of some ancient curse. And there was indeed a curse associated with the Hillock of the Women, a smooth green hill on Omey Island, near where we were exploring. The hill was an ancient burial ground -- for women only -- and the saying goes that any man's body found buried there would be tossed up on the beach the following day. Three hundred bodies were uncovered by shifting sands when a violent storm lashed the coast a few years ago. Were these the bones of irreverent males?

History and folklore are practically all that's left of this small tidal island, whose population has dwindled from 400 in pre-famine times to 20 today. Another island, Inishshark, once a vibrant fishing community, is now deserted, a haunting landscape of roofless cottages and grass-covered potato ridges. St. Macdara's Island, site of an impressive, sixth-century monastery, is occupied today only by grazing sheep and cattle. Inishbofin, Connemara's most populated island, has around 180 residents, about one-tenth the number it had in 1850.

These remote islands, nearly as far west as one can get in Europe, are places of staggering natural beauty that are little known and difficult to reach but well worth the effort. Here one gets a rare glimpse of Irish life over the centuries: promontory forts used by marauding Celtic tribes, small early Christian chapels, the rocky remains of English forts and the burial sites of islanders who lived one of the harshest existences imaginable.

Last July, after more than a dozen trips exploring the mountains and inlets of mainland Connemara, I decided to see for myself what lay beyond the west coast. With my family and houseguests -- seven of us in all, ages 3 to 80 -- I ventured out into the ''sea-wind'' as Yeats called it, finding a world even more magical than the one I'd left behind.

Omey Island

Omey, the only one of the islands I had visited before, is the easiest to reach. When the 16-foot tide is out, one can walk, drive or ride a pony across the gray-brown, washboardlike sand. When the tide is in, only a boat will do.

The half-mile beach between Omey and the mainland is expansive and uncrowded. We kicked a soccer ball and lawn-bowled there, and our children ran from tidepool to tidepool to see what kind of aquatic creatures they could catch in their colorful nets. Every day in summer when the tide is right, one can hear the thunderous sound of ponies from the local riding school galloping across the sand. A short visit will render pockets full of lovely seashells, including long skinny razor fish.

But be forewarned. Once you leave the beach and begin to explore the treeless interior of the island, it is easy to get stranded.

My husband and I learned the hard way. Some years ago we were looking for seals on the cliffs at the western end of the island, forgot about the rising tide and spent seven dark and chilly hours playing word games until the sea subsided.

At the eastern edge of the island is the Ollabrendan Graveyard, an ancient monastic site associated with St. Brendan the Navigator, believed by some to have crossed the Atlantic in the sixth century. Graceful Celtic crosses dominate the graveyard and traditional burial sites are filled with pebbles of white quartz -- a symbol of hope, innocence and death.

But St. Feichin, not St. Brendan, is Omey's best-known saint. Like other rebellious hermits who retreated to Ireland's western isles in the seventh to ninth centuries, St. Feichin chose Omey, where he built an abbey and lived an ascetic life of religious devotion. His abbey is now gone but on its site sits a medieval church, completely buried in sand until it was excavated in 1981.

Nearby is St. Feichin's holy well, said to cure skin ailments and still in use today, evidenced by the relics left by devotees: dolls, fishermen's line, coins, prayer cards and plastic-covered obituaries. Fishermen often carried a vial of the holy water in their black-tar curraghs, the traditional Connemara boat, and emigrants took the water with them when crossing the Atlantic.

The shore is strewn with black, white and pink speckled Omey granite and wildflowers such as the prickly-gray sea holly and tiny, carnationlike sea pinks. We pried limpets off the rocks and ate them raw. Once considered food of the poor, limpets were traditionally cooked in the ashes of a turf fire. Climbing to higher ground we saw one of the few examples of modern life: the Irish poet Richard Murphy's hexagonal retreat. Murphy is Connemara's best-known poet and his poem, ''The Cleggan Disaster,'' from his 1963 book ''Sailing to an Island,'' recounts a vicious storm that took the lives of 25 men, nine from Inishbofin. A memorial to the men who died can be seen in the Ollabrendan Graveyard. Higher still, the island's summit offers a spectacular 360-degree view of the mountains called the 12 Bens to the east and other small islands to the west.